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Reviving the Corpse of the L.A. Lit Scene: Q&A with Slake’s Joe Donnelly
Joe Donnelly Slake, a new, Los Angeles-focused literary journal, put on one hell of a release party for its newest issue on a recent Friday night in Atwater. There were couture food trucks serving...
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God Is in the Gutter: Ben Ehrenreich’s ‘Ether’
Ben Ehrenreich’s new novel, Ether (City Lights; 164 pages), follows an insomniac author living in a crumbling dystopia. He’s writing a novel about The Stranger, a man in a crusty white suit, an earthly...
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A Quiet Kind of L.A. Confidential: Ry Cooder’s ‘Los Angeles Stories’
Going by musician Ry Cooder’s new book of short fiction, Los Angeles Stories (City Lights Publishers; 230 pages), L.A. in the ‘50s was a place where what you didn’t know could ruin your life, or kill...
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Both Outside and Inside the Literary World: Q&A with Dagoberto Gilb
Dagoberto Gilb (photo by Jean-Luc Bertini) Dagoberto Gilb is arguably the most critically acclaimed Mexican American author writing today, with a publication resume few writers of any background can...
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A Fortunate Literary Community in L.A.: Wendy C. Ortiz and Rhapsodomancy
In Los Angeles, a person can’t get anywhere in seven minutes. There’s no Muni, BART, quaint Italian streetcar or the tried and true 22 Fillmore. Attending readings can be a chore that involves multiple...
View ArticleEast of the 5, South of the 10
Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades were brothers. They wrested control of Los Angeles —greater Los Angeles—from their forebears and drew lots to divide the spoils. Zeus got Hollywood, downtown, La Brea, the...
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Margaret Weatherford: 1966-2012
Margaret Weatherford (photo by Mary Weatherford) When I met her at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1989, Margaret Weatherford was the California girl the Beach Boys never imagined: a black-haired,...
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Pulling Back the Layers: Adrian Wong’s ‘Orange Peel, Harbor Seal, Hyperreal’
Adrian Wong's "Untitled (Wall II)" (photo courtesy of the artist) Adrian Wong’s three sculptural works comprising Orange Peel, Harbor Seal, Hyperreal, now on display at the Chinese Cultural Center in...
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A Frank Investigation of Her Family: Q&A with Paula Priamos
Paula Priamos In her recent memoir, The Shyster’s Daughter (Etruscan Press; 250 pages), which was excerpted in ZYZZYVA 91, Paula Priamos investigates the death of her lawyer father and paints an...
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Discovering L.A., and the Mother She Never Knew: Anna Stothard’s ‘The Pink...
In her second novel, The Pink Hotel (Picador Original, 280 pages), just published in the United States, Anna Stothard tells the tale of a 17-year-old girl’s attempts find out more about the life and...
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From a Kurdish Mountain Town, to Streets of L.A.: Laleh Khadivi’s ‘The Walking’
Laleh Khadivi’s The Walking (Bloomsbury; 258 pages), the second novel in her projected trilogy about Iran, follows two Kurdish brothers who escape Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution in search of a...
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Easy Rawlins Searches the Sunset Strip: Walter Mosley’s ‘Little Green’
Little Green (Doubleday, 304 Pages), the new crime thriller from Walter Mosley, is the eleventh installment in the Easy Rawlins series, which kicked off with 1990’s Devil in a Blue Dress. Easy is now...
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Pushing Against the Constraints of Circumstance: Q&A with Kate Milliken
(photo by Adam Karsten) Kate Milliken is a graduate of the Bennington College Writing Seminars and recipient of fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center and the Tin House summer writing workshops....
View ArticleZYZZYVA Interview Series: David L. Ulin & Gary Kamiya
David L. Ulin (whose work has appeared in ZYZZYVA Issues No. 100 and 104) is the author or editor of eight previous books, including The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time and...
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Thwarted Pilgrimage: ‘White Sands’ by Geoff Dyer
There are a few different types of ignorance at work in Geoff Dyer’s new book, White Sands: Experiences from the Outside World, a collection of essays that combine travel writing and art criticism. One...
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A Sunset You Don’t Want to Miss: ‘Slow Days, Fast Company’ by Eve Babitz
“I am quick to categorize and find it saves mountains of time,” writes Eve Babitz in her superb autobiographical novel Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, The Flesh, And L.A. (184 pages; NYRB). Matthew...
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An Era, and Its People, Shaped by a Plague: ‘Christodora’ by Tim Murphy
Tim Murphy’s latest novel, Christodora (432 pages; Grove Press), arrives in the middle of a cultural yearning for the seedier, more affordable, which is to say “idealized” Manhattan of yesteryear....
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Our World Without Any Memory of Itself: ‘NK3’ by Michael Tolkin
Michael Tolkin’s 1988 novel, The Player, remains a note-perfect send-up of late Eighties Hollywood excess, a paranoid neo-noir told from the point-of-view of the murderer himself—a creatively and...
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L.A. Story: ‘Cake Time’ by Siel Ju
In 1985, Lorrie Moore announced her arrival on the literary scene with “How to be the Other Woman,” the provocative opening salvo that began her first story collection, Self-Help; she has since gone on...
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Endless Fascination: Q&A with ‘L.A. Man’ Author Joe Donnelly
You can’t accuse Joe Donnelly of taking it easy. In a decades-spanning career, the Los Angeles writer has profiled the “who’s who” of Hollywood––from America’s sweetheart Drew Barrymore to iconoclast...
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